Personal day today. Taking care of the S.O.'s shopping list-she always has one when I come to the US. Going out to the house and checking on it-especially since I will probably be coming back to it. As a drive around here-I am reminding myself of the fact that every place has good things about it, and I will need to come to terms with that if I do end up moving back here. If I can find a job that will allow me to pay down my bills, and build equity in the house, and give me the benefits I need-then that's a good thing. Life is about compromises.
I've been watching all the political coverage of the last two days. It is kind of scary how Chris Christie is being annointed as the next Ronald Reagan. The guy is a plain speaker and I can see him riding , just like Reagan, on white horse up Pennsylvania Ave. My big fear is that, just like Reagan, Christie will lay the seeds of our own destruction. Its only now in the view of hindsight-we can see what a disaster Reagan's policies were for America. Remember he is the guy who got the GOP to worship at the supply side altar. Go back and carefully read the history of the era-it was not the tax cuts that jump started the economy. It was a technological revolution combined with huge defense spending. But the Reagan era awakened the worst instincts of Americans and 20 years later led to the worthless people who make up teabagger land.
As for the Virginia race, I refer you to Mr. Pierce:
Face facts. In a sane political world. Ken Cuccinelli should have lost by 12 points. Bishop Jackson should have lost by 98. These are two guys who have to dial 1 just to place a call to "extreme." Instead, this morning, Cuccinelli can argue fairly convincingly that he got sold out by his national party, that his ideas were not rejected, and that the destruction of the Affordable Care Act is a winning issue, provided the moneymen get behind it and push. McAuliffe even acknowledged this in his looonnnnnng acceptance speech last night, where he spent a lot of time thanking the Republicans who supported his campaign, as if most of them won't go back to the business of undermining him by, at the latest, Friday afternoon. In all of this, Ken Cuccinelli won.
That it was a close race at all is a testament to the stupidity of both the Virginia voter and the Democratic party. And yes, Virginia, a lot of you are stupid.
And I have been watching the national blame game about the health care law. Just like with the wars-no one ever puts the blame where it belongs. In Iraq the blame lay with the Iraqi people, who proved and continue to prove every stereotype I ever had about Arabs. In the case of the health care law-so many people refuse to blame the people deserve the blame. The insurance companies who created the current mess we have-and by their recent actions-remind us again why they are greedy and way, way, too rich. "You can keep you policy" was based on an expectation that insurance companies would do what the law required, and upgrade the policies to where they should have been. Juan Williams finally had the gumption to point it out:
Time to get moving.
Argument would have more weight with some meat on the bone. Your party made it the law, punishable by heavy fines, to not go to insurance companies and buy their product, as defined by Democrats, and now you turn around and call the insurance companies greedy? Why’d you make everyone buy what they did not want? Some people just want health care, not health insurance but hey, fuck them, they don’t know what’s best for them!
Christie is a liberal democrat. Just like Romney. If you wonder how I know that, all you have to do is see how the press treats him. Poor Romney was running just left of Obama which means he didn’t get any conservative votes.
I rember when I was young our heath care was taken care of by a family doctor who had a black bag and traveled to our home to do check ups and give shots. It was a pay as you go agreement. Then somehow it converted to a benefit provided by my dad’s empoyeer and the rest is history.
Juan Williams is a joke at times, and I don’t see why NPR fired him. Having said that, I will give Fox News credit by at least having an opposing view point.
As far as his comments go, who says that the insurance companies policies are substandard? A story was published about a woman who is losing her insurance who is undergoing cancer treatments in San Diego. Her old policy covered both her visits to UCSD Medical and local doctors and her visits to Stanford for more advanced treatemsnts. Now she was told her policy will be cancelled, and none of the plans being offered will match what she has. Further, in the past one was limited by law for insurance policies to be transferred between states, but under the new ACA, she can’t use her policy outside of one county. So she is more limited in what options she has.
Will some of the plans under the ACA be better than what some have now, probably will. But what right does the government have to make you change? Obama likes to use the analogy of one going to the Apple store to get a product. And how much better his plan is. But he misses the point. I don’t have to buy an Apple product. As a matter of fact, there are alternatives to Apple products and the consumer has the choice. If people want to pay a higher price for an Apple it’s their choice, but there are just a good options with Andorid, etc. As a matter of fact, I am still rocking an SII 3G, which I picked up this year after leaving my standard Japanese flip phone. But even though I am lagging behind in the whiz bang gadgetry, I can still make a phone call to an I-phone, and I don’t need to upgrade to do so.
Those pushing he ACA seem to miss that point.
How did all of these “substandard” policies get approved for sale in this highly regulated industry???
@ Sean,
That is a very good point. Another question that should be asked along that same train of thought is what happened to all of the mortage insurance that the banks made people buy when they didn’t qualify for loans and yet they got them? If they defaulted, wouldn’t the banks get their money back since the borrower was supposedly paying the insurance coverage for the bank. Yet, they claim that they lost money.
I mentioned private industry in my previous post, and I guess the government is taking a lesson from them. How many times has anyone had to turn off the “automatic updates” on their windows pc since they push them out all the time. As you keep updating, the newer updates will make your system use more resources until it reaches the point where, you will just be better off buying a new computer with a new OS, than have a slow as molasses computer. I guess they are doing this with healtcare. You can keep your health plan, but they are going to put so many updates on you that you will sooner or later be forced to buy their upgrade. I guess they do learn from private industry.
I think you guys are ignoring a couple of key points: There can and should be a standard set of preventative care and levels of care that should be in EVERY policy. That's what they do in Germany and in Germany the companies are not permitted to make a profit on that base policy. Where they make profit is on turnover and selling life and bridge policies. But it provides everyone health insurance.
Secondly-you are ignoring the fact that the companies did not have to cancel the policies at all-they simply had to upgrade them and set premiums accordingly. Long before the health care law became law, my insurance premiums went up three years running. ( Yes I buy private insurance on top of TRICARE-I like having a fixed expense each month and , when I was in the US, not having to pay the doctor when I went for a visit). They have the income margins to include the required coverage in the policies without fucking people over. They are choosing not to do so. Now I am pessimist so I see this for what it is-a means to drive people into the exchanges and off of their books. E.G. Insurance companies are still trying to cherry pick their customers so they get premiums without having to pay out.
And if anything it proves that the advocates of a public option were very, very, correct.
Curtis-re Christie- I would submit to you that he understands what true blue conservatives do not. In order to win, you have to appeal to a broader group of folks than just the ideological zealots. Unless there is some big skeleton in his closet he has a better chance of winning than Tail gunner Ted. Or radical Rand.
Maurice,
Your apple analogy falls flat in that you can live without ever using a computer (or at least an Apple one). You cannot live without using healthcare. That’s why the government has a responsibility to ensure that , since we have chosen to go the private insurance route ( there are, after all other ways to the same end).
So what right does the government have to tell you? 1) You do have obligations as a citizen and member of a commonwealth. 2) The government is really telling the companies that a certain standard of service is demanded for all people. There is nothing wrong with that and is implicit in the role of government to regulate commerce in such a way to keep business from racing to the bottom, e.g. fucking people over for maximum profit.
I haven’t looked into it myself. I’m covered. I read about people now being required to buy health care policies and pay for pediatric care, maternity care, etc and yet they have no children and aren’t ever going to have children so why must that be part of the new minimum standard package?
A lady made the news nationwide last week after her policy was canx. She said she’d already consumed $1.2 million in care for her cancer therapies in hospitals in northern, southern CA and Texas. Yet they dropped her when Obamacare came out.
Do you have a feeling for what is going to happen when Obama finally complies with the law and the mandated employer mandate kicks in? Thousands of companies will terminate their employee policies.
Viz Christie, you’re wrong Skippy. I don’t know conservatives but my only real concern is the fiscal limitations of running out of money and credit. We’ve already done the first and the world is starting to wake up to the cost of paying for government on credit. The banks are all ruined and insolvent now after loaning so much to governments that cannot repay them.
You are quite right that there must be the appearance of BUYING votes by selling out the future to the get the votes of the drones who do not work and simply want more and more benefits and entitlements. You can see that future by paying a visit to Detroit.
Curtis,
I guess the difference is how we view the malfeasance of the employers. I see it as their obligation to their employees and to the society in general. You appear to see it as a burden that limits their profitability. In my perfect world employers don’t have a choice-providing health care is a cost of doing business. If you want to make the exorbitant salaries that their CEOS make-they need to pay the piper. If they don’t then they close. Plenty of others who will take their place. The US needs to be more like Europe.
Take the example you cite. There is no defense for that action. The insurance company involved should have its leadership taken out and strung up. That is what happens with for profit insurance and its why as I get older I am more and more adamant that benefits be paid for. Her insurance company has the resources-they just need he kick in the ass to use them.
Re: deficit. There are straight forward solutions-but like it or not they involve generating revenue. Repeal of the Bush tax cuts is long over due as is taxing corporations on the global income.
Skippy you actually think nonsense and write it too. In Europe more than half the people work for the government. Of course they have great insurance and lifetime jobs but that cannot go on. In the US we’re closing in on those kind of numbers and it manifestly cannot go on. See Detroit. See how few cars they make now. See how little of anything at all they do now. I include all government jobs including local, county, municipal and their little spin-off jobs too. They don’t produce anything. They make nothing.
That lady had insurance to kill for. The democrats opened wide a window and let the insurance companies LEAP through it because that is EXACTLY how the DEMOCRATS wrote their law. The company evinced no desire to her that they were going to bail out on her until your friends told them they had to REWRITE ALL of their policies because all must be adjusted to cover the new actuarial realities that your friends and you deny exist in the real world.
I still snicker that Obama and Pelosi and Reid fucked up so badly that the price for “winning” the budget resolution scam last year and lifting the deficit limit, was Obama agreeing to make the Bush tax cuts permanent and the sequester. Yet we still have these idiots roaming the land telling us how stupid Boehner is. 🙂
I don’t believe that insurance is the the responsibility of the employer. In fact I find that idea totally ludicrous. I know it isn’t portable and so do you and yet you have no problem with that tie that binds people to even a shitty employer if they know that leaving means they and/or their family loses their health care insurance. That is just wrong. Pay people enough to pay for their own health care.
Skippy,
Yes my apple analogy does fall flat, but I am just paraphrasing what the President said at first when the Obamacare web sites were not working. More to the point, he mentioned that Apple didn’t let a few glitches that occured when they roll out a new product stop them, they overcame them. Yes they did but it was purely for economic reasons. They knew if the product didn’t work, the buyers wouldn’t be there. Just look at how Windows smart phones did when they first came out. People have options. But not with healthcare, and more specifically, when the government is forcing you to buy their product. The insurance companies are only complying with what’s in the law. It is the law that says if they have to make changes to their existing policies, they must cancel and force people to get new ones, simply because the companies have to be in compliance with the law as it exists.
Curtis, I think you have to remember the level of disinformation that was present back in 2009 what with the tea party loons and Sarah Palin and her death panels. A specific problem with the drafting of the law was the failure to include a public option-and we are saying why that was bad now. The insurance companies were petrified of having a public option. For two reasons primarily: 1 they did not want a not for profit entiity challenging their near monopoly on customers in certain areas and 2) they did not want to be able to fix prices. After all insurance company profits ballooned over 500% in the first decade of the 21st century. God forbid the greedy bastards would let anything get in the way of that gravy train. Let me reiterate done properly a private insurance solution combined with the availability of a public option does not have to bind an individual to a company or job. For example if all employers were required to pay into a standard policy or Medisave account-then what would happen when you changed jobs is that the new employer would simply pay their fair share. (as would the employee).If you lost employment you would join the public option with a set premium combined with taxpayers supports. The issue would be having a law with a enough teeth that prevented companies from cancelling insurance for any reason other than non-payment of premiums. Like it or not this is a cost of doing business in a civilized society if business can't or won't accept that then they have to be forced to. The money is out there to do it.
The mandate is essential and I view it no different than the requirement to have liability insurance on your car. Again its a question of not allowing loopholes-and a recognition that this is an individual sacrifice that contributes to the overall good of society. Plenty of other countries do this without all of the melodrama that happens here in the Whining States of America.
No. You don’t see it.
1. The law made the insurance companies offer different policies at different rates and service to each STATE and made it against the law for the insurance companies to simply treat the entire US as a single market/insurance pool.
—I don’t know who did that or why. It could well be something that the companies did.
2. You treat the price of care as if it was inelastic. It is not. Just as cost of living varies, which has impact on salaries and other things, so too does the cost of health care vary. What you propose is to peg the cost for all of the employers at the cost of doing business in the most expensive market/State.
You’d reap from that exactly what happened with the real estate bubble and also the Education bubble where the cost of a university degree rises to more than keep pace with how much the government is willing to loan to idiots seeking a college degree. There is no upper limit to cost when the government is the bottom line and orders employers to pay the costs set by the government’s policies. Sarbanes Oxley ring any bells with you?
See what the idiots and morons did at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s grotesque.
That Insurance Companies would cancel policies is not only foreseeable, but was a key part of getting people to buy the packages that would make ACA work. The problem of existing conditions was considered a non-problem since ACA takes care of existing conditions.
POTUS just happen to overlook that governments natural pace of movement was going to open a large gap, and didn’t put any freeze in place. But that’s been just one of a long string of goofs. Obama: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.” An elitist, completely out-of-touch with the world of the average person statement.
Me, I’m a shade left of the CCP, but I living in Hong Kong, which almost always comes in at the top of any poll/survey as the most open, lazze-faire economy in the world. I think these poll are a bit mistaken, but compared to the USA, spot on. Still, even here the corporatist/CCP lapdogs agree that there are three areas you don’t want to put the profit motive into play: justice, medical, and the commons (air and water). Single payer what we have in Hong Kong, and it is the way most of the 1st world goes, even if the insurance industries’ poster boy openly mocked Bernie Saunders and those who support it as nut cases. But in the USA, not just medicine, but courts, jails, and much of the commons is managed under the profit motive. Too bad by his repeated goofs, Obama has probably ruined any chance of getting the right policy into place. His replacement, Hillary, has long ago sold her soul to the insurance lobby; her stepping into and out of the non-domestic State Dept leaves her relatively un-scarred and primed to say “I told you so”.